I was thinking that, too. I can't imagine it costing more than $29, but it might be a little too much to be free.

I expect it'll be free otherwise how would Internet Recovery know what you're entitled to? If they're moving to the iOS model, we'll see annual major releases and it'll deprecate hardware faster than before.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it was cheaper than the last couple of updates. So far, it doesn't feel like a "major" update, like the leap from Tiger to Leopard, or even Snow Leopard to Lion. I would bet an even cheaper price tag of $19.99.

They could have pre-ML macs only be able to download Lion with Internet Recovery. Then you'd have to download ML on top of that if you bought it.

Exactly! In fact that is how it would have to work. If you sell your Mac which came with Lion, the purchaser would only be entitled to Lion and not ML even if you paid for it since App Store software licenses are non-transferrable.

Exactly! In fact that is how it would have to work. If you sell your Mac which came with Lion, the purchaser would only be entitled to Lion and not ML even if you paid for it since App Store software licenses are non-transferrable.

And yet no iPhones or iPads work remotely this way... Why should they be any different? At its heart, apple is a hardware company.

I think apple is making a bad decision with ML, they plan to release it jus a year after Lion, and they are concentrating their efforts in making a paid update, but there are still some known issues with wifi in Lion so now what we will have to pay to get another update when the last one doesn't even work correctly this is Crap. I think they should fix issues with lion first and stop thinking of charging more money to people for minor updates, because all the ML features are missing things in lion.

And yet no iPhones or iPads work remotely this way... Why should they be any different? At its heart, apple is a hardware company.

iOS upgrades have been free (with one exception) so there is no issue there. However any apps you buy for iOS are non-transferrable, just like the Mac Store apps (and the OS X upgrades are Mac Store apps). They are all tied to your Apple ID.

I expect it'll be free otherwise how would Internet Recovery know what you're entitled to? If they're moving to the iOS model, we'll see annual major releases and it'll deprecate hardware faster than before.

easy. Just issue a firmware update to have it download ML instead of L.